OFDM is a data transmission scheme where data is split into a plurality of smaller streams and each stream is transmitted using a sub-carrier with a smaller bandwidth than the total available transmission bandwidth. The efficiency of OFDM depends on choosing these sub-carriers orthogonal to each other. The sub-carriers do not interfere with each other while each carrying a portion of the total user data.
An OFDM system has advantages over other wireless communication systems. When the user data is split into streams carried by different sub-carriers, the effective data rate on each sub-carrier is much smaller. Therefore, the symbol duration is much larger. A large symbol duration can tolerate larger delay spreads. Thus, it is not affected by multipath as severely. Therefore, OFDM symbols can tolerate delay spreads without complicated receiver designs. However, typical wireless systems need complex channel equalization schemes to combat multipath fading.
Another advantage of OFDM is that the generation of orthogonal sub-carriers at the transmitter and receiver can be done by using inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) and fast Fourier transform (FFT) engines. Since the IFFT and FFT implementations are well known, OFDM can be implemented easily and does not require complicated receivers.
MIMO refers to the type of wireless transmission and reception scheme where both a transmitter and a receiver employ more than one antenna. A MIMO system takes advantage of the spatial diversity or spatial multiplexing and improves signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and increases throughput.
SFBC is a scheme for transmitting symbols of a space diversity coding on neighboring sub-carriers rather than on the same sub-carrier in the successive time slots. The SFBC avoids the problems of fast time variations associated with space time block coding (STBC). However, the channel needs to be constant over the sub-carriers that combining takes place.